Love My Rifle More Than You
by QueenOfGeeks
Summary: Hell was paved in bloodred gold... AU GS


**Love My Rifle More Than You**

**Author:** QueenOfGeeks

**Rating:** M

**Pairing:** GSR

**A/N:** Yeah, definitely been a while since I've written… anything, really. I shamelessly filched this title off a book I saw in Chapters (I think that's Barnes & Nobles to you Americans). This is _so_ far off the AU scale, I don't even think it reads, and I'm going to caution now for severe offensiveness that just seemed to seep into my brain and wouldn't edit out. Other than that, here you go, and review if you have a comment!

* * *

The night we got caught, I was prepping for an exfil.

4AM local, dark as hell out, and we were extracting a 'dissident' from somewhere in the Middle East -- you know I can't say more, or I really _would_ have to kill you. She (yes, a _female_ 'dissident'), unfortunately, was a mole, or the whole scheme would've gone off with nary a hitch and I wouldn't be here today.

Instead, she had a tracking beacon woven into the decorative beading of her _hijab_, which she insisted on taking. All along, she had been a plant, which was rather disheartening for me, a supposed intelligence specialist. Yeah, military intelligence -- the only bigger oxymoron is… well, I don't know a bigger oxymoron to be truthful. Anyway, our mole, Nasrin al Zahra, was cowering in the corner; whether out of fear of us or her masters, I couldn't tell you.

Radioed for the helo, prepped the exfil site and our prep site. Just as I'm finishing strapping myself into a flight harness, staccato bursts of what could _only_ be a Kalashnikov. Ducked for cover, because it was the only way I was gonna get out relatively healthy. Signaled the helo to wave off to the Plan B site, and turned around to take on the world.

You know, I read a study a few years ago that said that two percent of the United States military was composed of sociopaths. Really, they did say that. I remember asking the difference between a sociopath and a psychopath, too. The quick and dirty version goes something like 'A psycho doesn't get the difference between right and wrong. A sociopath gets it, they just don't give a flying fuck.' It struck me as sorta scary that two friggin' percent of the military enjoyed killing people, until I killed my first one.

Then I got it. Fuck, did I ever get it.

I lost my virginity to a little Chechen. Scary fucker was playing with anthrax in a biowarfare facility just outside Kursk. I trailed him for a week before I got up the nerve to splatter his brains like strawberry ice cream all over the windshield of his Mercedes. I enjoyed it too, and that just about made me check into the local Haha Hotel. Then I did it again for the CIA, and then the NRO, and finally I just started loving the sight of blood, especially someone else's. And I liked it more when my bullet/fist/bomb/whatever put it out there. And I resigned myself to being a sociopath and was glad I had a damn label I could understand for once.

My M16, trusted rifle that is, was dubbed 'The Paver' by the squad. You know, as in, "If I'm going to hell, then you can pave the way for me." Hell was paved in blood-red gold that night, because out of a 15-guerilla unit, I only missed one. Hell, I shouldn't even count it as a miss: the guy beside him blew them both up. Hauled ass on the only other guy that made it through, and booked it 10 miles to Plan B.

We got out of there with our skins, and we were glad for it. Walking into a conflict situation with United States Army Rangers practically tattooed on your forehead and making it out with a hide is a pretty damn good day's worth of work.

* * *

"Fuck it, Sergeant! Did you _deliberately_ skip training the day they said 'secret missions are secrets', or is this just more of your charming personality?" 

Sergeant Sara Sidle, United States Army Ranger. For about the next ten minutes if Colonel over there don't shut his friggin' mouth and _listen_ for a goddamn moment. Or I don't just interrupt him and cut it down to ten seconds.

"Now, what do you have to say for yourself, Sergeant Sidle?" Finally.

"Colonel, al Zahra was a plant. She was part of the al Zarquahi faction of Al Qaeda. She had them track us and then ambushed us at the exfil site. I'm sure if I could have done something about getting a half-dozen men killed, I would've, sir. I don't like it when my men get killed. They take too long to train properly." Now, let him chew on that for, oh, three seconds.

"Sergeant Sidle, I am remanding you into custody for disrespect, failure to obey an order or regulation, misbehavior before an enemy, and 4 counts of _second-degree murder_. I'm giving you five minutes to decide whether you want the full court-marshal or if you will do the _smart_ thing and resign your damn commission!"

What. The. Flying. Fuck?

Not only was the charges bullshit, but I couldn't be charged under UCMJ for covert actions sanctioned by the fucking governme—

"Oh, did I forget to mention you had your fucking sanctions **revoked** after this stunt? You're SOL, Sidle, and you know it," Colonel smirked. Stupid fucker. He had me by the short and curlies, and he was damned if he wasn't going to rub it in my face. Big mistake, telling my commander that I'd only date him if SecDef permitted it and pigs flew the damn declaration to me. Yep, in the grand scheme of career moves I think that was somewhere equal to chucking a flashbang into a meeting of the Chiefs of Staff.

And since I had no sanctions, which I'm sure I was conveniently not informed about… Oh, make no mistake; Colonel Zachary Turner really_ was_ that cold. Not that I'm surprised or anything. He just has no regard for human life, which I guess is a good thing when you send people to get killed all the time. It also means that I was royally fucked over. Damn.

There goes that career.

And so, I decided that I needed something completely different. That decision lasted a sum total of about forty seconds. OK, fifty – I actually had to think of it first.

And then I got a phone call.

* * *

The US Army maintains a sort of 'normal life' for its covert-ops specialists, in case they ever get their cover blown. Mine happened to be forensics. Hell, I had a 'degree' from Harvard to go with it, in theoretical physics of all things! I haven't even _seen_ Harvard, but apparently I'm a pretty damn smart cookie there. Nice. 

Back to topic, The phone rang on my 'normal life' line. Sorta nerve-wracking, considering it's never rang when I'm home, but what they hey? It's apparently impolite to just let it ring, I hear. So I grabbed it, and who would be on the other end but the San Francisco Crime Lab, asking about an application that I don't remember filling out and sending in. Actually, they were asking if I wanted the job.

Blood spatter? Why do you even bother asking? I'll be out on the next transport…um, flight.

I made it to CSI III in record time, literally. A year, and I was ahead of people with twice my experience, through they didn't need to know that. I could process 419s, 414s, you name it. Great job, great shoes (read _not_ combat boots), and a great man. Sorta.

Gil Grissom. What a friggin' disaster.

He came to 'Frisco to teach a seminar on entomology, and consult on one of my cases. As it happened, I got the full dose of him, because I was signed up for the seminar too, also unbeknownst to me.

There seems to be a recurring pattern in my life: I never have a goddamn clue what's going on in it.

We hit it off almost instantly. Scary, that is. Not even getting Tasered feels quite like that little shock that zaps you when you meet 'that guy'. Three hours a day of seminar, eight hours a night of consulting, and neither of us slept in weeks, it seemed like. It was just that manic energy that kept us going. We couldn't have done shit in the military without amps at that point, but for just straight science? We were gods, and the evidence danced to the merry tune of Guilty. And then he was due to fly back to his real life, in Vegas.

We already knew how the other felt. It's hard to miss those little glances, or the fact that for just about every off time, we were either at his hotel room or my apartment getting to know each other in the biblical sense. Actually, I was enjoying the fact that we fell into bed so easily, considering your options were rather limited when you spend most of your time with a rifle to sleep with instead of a human. It was no-strings, no-questions-asked sex. Go in horny, go out satisfied and hopefully friends. Or friends with benefits, which is even better.

He tried to convince me to go back to Vegas with him. I could work there, he said. Better lab, better equipment. And him. Apparently the no-strings-attached thing had gone right out the window. Joy.

Instead, he left a note taped to my coffee maker, where I was sure to get it. Pretty simplistic: name, email address, phone number, and a little note saying he'd be in touch. I believed that for about half a second. Guys don't do the 'let's keep in touch' thing. I think it's against their genetic coding, right along with instruction manuals and asking for directions. But Gil Grissom was different.

He stuck to it.

And for four years, we emailed back and forth. Little anecdotes about our labs, journal articles we liked, books we loved – just the little things that make your day a bit brighter, or as bright as it gets for a sociopath. I fell into a routine, and slowly I started forgetting all about my days as Sergeant Sara Sidle, US Army Ranger, and living Sara Sidle, CSI III San Francisco.

Go to work, hide sociopathic tendencies. Work for 12 hours at a time, go home when hiding is no longer an option. Sleep and/or smoke through desire to go splatter more blood. Repeat ad nausaeum. Good routine for me, good for the lab, and for the entire time I resisted the temptation to pick up my rifle again and go play with the other kiddies in the sandbox of evil. And best of all, the army forgot I existed again. It was grand.

And yet again, a phone call signaled the end.

* * *

"Sara, I need you." 

Rub the sleep out of my eyes, crack an eyelid. Grunt some answer, and then ask who the hell is calling me. Engage brain, and still I'm clueless.

"Sara, it's Grissom. There's been a shooting here, and I need help, and I don't know who else to call, and I'm lost and I'm babbling here, aren't I? Sara? Answer me, honey." He sounded like he hadn't slept in a month, and someone was keeping him up only by the strength of military-grade amps. Not healthy. And he's waiting for an answer.

"Ok, Griss, say that all again in sentences of four words and no more than two syllables. It's 2 in the afternoon here. I'm supposed to be sleeping. Now, start again."

I really hate it when people wake me up. In the military, we all got conditioned to stay awake for days at a time. Now that I don't have to do it, I catch up as much as I can. By military standards, I'm the laziest bastard to ever carry a rifle, and that's a helluva accomplishment. Unfortunately that still makes me a civilian insomniac, but whatever. Not like I ever ran on anything but coffee before.

"Holly got shot. Help me, I don't know what to do. Will you investigate! Come off it, Sara, answer me! Fuck, what's going on?" Grissom was agitated, and I still hadn't a damn clue what he was saying but, okay, we can deal with this.

I must have said something that was interpreted like agreement, because the next thing I knew I was standing outside some garish casino in the broad daylight watching crash test dummies get flung off the roof like a bad day at Mythbusters. And you know what? The hell with a CSI getting shot, Grissom and I just started back in like all the awkward 'morning after' shit hadn't happened. Fuck, at the rate we were at, we'd be attacking each other on the way to this lab I've heard so much about. Damn, but this was gonna be fun…

* * *

Ok, it _was_ gonna be fun. Until Grissom rediscovered his supervisory duties and shoved them so far up his ass that if I didn't know better I'd swear they were stuffing up his sinuses. 'No, Sara. I can't, Sara. It's not right, Sara.' Oh, and it was in 'Frisco, when it was _my_ job on the line? Fucking bastard, screwing me then screwing me over. 

But I did it. For seven miserable, lousy years, I did it. I tied my parachute to a Slinky and let myself get bounced back and forth like a Ping-Pong ball with too much tequila to drink. Hot, cold, left, right; it didn't matter because I got to watch him everyday. I watched him with Terri, 'molding skulls'. I watched him with Lurie, confessing the same old bullshit I'd heard from him in California and the first week in Vegas. And I saw him with Lady Heather.

Now that hurt like a sonofabitch. Crazy chick in more vinyl than an old record store, and he has fucking _high tea_! I hate to be the one to break it to you, honey, but Gil Grissom is only civilized on the outside. That carefully crafted veneer falls apart the minute you go from drinking coffee on the balcony to fucking like animals on the kitchen floor. With Gil Grissom it will never be gentle and polite, and you know what? Until neon lights and showgirls came between him and me, we were perfectly fine with it. Balls-deep in the living room, tied to the shower rod, whatever. It didn't matter, because it was about pure, sweaty, rough sex.

And I knew that, but so did you.

* * *

The first line of Genesis says 'In the beginning'. Well, now it's time to write the end and it goes like this. 

'In the end, there was no God. There was no day, no night, no light or dark. There was me and you, and my rifle and your bugs. And I took my rifle, and you took your bugs, and we walked in opposite directions until we ran out of Earth to walk on. And there we stood, halfway around our world, face to face, and no better off than when we started.'

Military training is great. It teaches you how to live off nothing, how to fight when your most advanced weapon is a rubber band, how to spy when there's no way in hell you blend in with the crowd. I can blow up buildings, parachute out of planes… Hell, they taught me to enjoy spraying brain matter like I'm at a paintball range on a Saturday night.

I could shut down emotion, slow my heartbeat down to nothing so that it wouldn't fuck over my aim, stop blinking if my lashes were hitting the scope. And I was damn good at it, and I slept with my rifle as much as I did you. But you don't need me, do you? You need someone that doesn't mind your fits of temper, your mood swings, your constant desire to just fight. And you could have needed me, but you convinced yourself that you didn't love me enough to make me stay. And so I'm leaving because you know what?

I love my rifle more than you.


End file.
